


sunset came early last night

by fishycorvid



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Getting Together, Goes AU at the beginning of season 2, Hurt/Comfort, Multiple Endings, Not Canon Compliant, Undercover, Violence, angsty as hell, choose your own adventure? sort of who knows, i hurt myself a lil bit writing this, sort of.... but like.... you’ll see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-26 01:41:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14391537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: jake goes back undercover, and everyone breaks a little.





	sunset came early last night

The fist colliding with Jake’s jaw sends him reeling backward, dropping his gun to the ground as his hands go instinctively up to his face. Pain slices throughout his entire body and he harshly spits out a curse, eyes flicking up back to the criminal a second too late; the dark-haired man shoves him to the ground and kicks him in the side three times before darting away, leather jacket flapping behind him. Jake struggles to breathe, curled on the hard pavement in the alley, coughing slightly. 

“Fuck,” he whispers, and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, trying to catalogue the appearance of the criminal. 5’9”, give or take a few inches. White. Male. Faint scars on his hand. Late twenties. Harsh, pale blue eyes. Thin face. Lean, whiplike body. But the details are slipping away; he hit his head on the ground. He doesn’t even know the man’s name. It’s just another unnamed man that he’s seen before in dark alleys and crowded, dim warehouses.

Feet hit the cement coming towards him, and he struggles up to his knees, blindly scrabbling across the ground to grab his gun and point it in the direction of the footsteps, breathing hard from the exertion. His eyes are still closed. He wonders when he’ll be ready to open them again.

“Jake?” a voice says, an edge of fear and shock making it pitch up a bit more than normal. 

Jake lets his eyes open slowly to see Amy Santiago staring down at him (afraid and stunned and a bit angry and lost and still somehow absolutely fucking beautiful), and he’s suddenly very aware of how much of a mess he must look like. Hair mussed, bleeding from multiple cuts all over his body and face, bruise blossoming on his jaw, clothing torn. 

“Ames?” he breathes, and staggers up to his feet, even if he has to brace his hand against the ground unsteadily on the way up. “God, I-- is it really you?” 

It’s been months since he last saw her-- only a day after his first stint undercover, the FBI found a whole other sector of the crime family they’d been somehow unaware of, dangerous and secretive and even more deadly, and sent him back in-- and he’s still not entirely sure he’s not dreaming. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” she whispers, the words choked off a bit at the end. They’re standing stock still only a few feet away from each other, neither of them looking away. Above them, snow starts to fall. 

Slowly, she reaches out to touch his chest, just over his heart, as if to check that he’s really there, really okay. 

“I shouldn’t be here,” Jake murmurs, hand rising of its own volition to cover her smaller, cleaner fingers. There are hundreds of unspoken questions in his partner’s eyes: _Why are you here? Are you okay? Who hurt you? Is the op going well or are you too afraid to ask to be pulled out? Are you in danger? Why would you come so close to the precinct?_

He doesn’t know the answer to any of them. “You should come to my apartment. I’ll fix up those cuts. With any luck, they’ll figure you went off somewhere to lick your wounds,” she says softly, and suddenly she’s right in front of his face, gaze open and dark and a little bit scared. God, he’s missed her eyes, her voice, even the exasperated half smile she gets when he cracks a joke that’s just bad enough to make her roll her eyes.

Logically, he knows he can’t be seen anywhere near her. 

“Okay,” he says, and lets her lead him to her car.

_________

Her apartment is just like he remembers it: old fashioned, painted in pale colors, smelling faintly of lavender. In most ways, she’s just like he remembers her too except for the little things he feels bad for not noticing before: a furrow between her brows that doesn’t go away anymore, a pale scar at the juncture of her neck, bitten fingernails, fidgeting hands, a faint speck of gold in her deep brown eyes. She keeps on shooting him these _looks,_ like if she doesn’t make sure he’s there every minute or so he’ll disappear again, and he feels a pang of guilt. They don’t talk until they make it back to her apartment, at which point she tells him to put up his hood so no one can see his face and follow her.

“I don’t want anyone to know you’re here,” Amy explains, glancing away, and it’s not like he can argue with that, so instead he chuckles wryly and resists the urge to twist the whole thing into a joke, as much as he’s missed their banter. 

Once they’re inside, Jake shoves the hood back and looks around and nostalgia hits him so hard he almost forgets how to breathe. “I missed this dorky place, grandma-y doilies and all,” he says, half-grinning, and Amy almost flinches. 

“I missed _you,_ Jake.” 

Jake sucks in a breath and flops down onto her couch, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Me too, Ames.” 

She touches his shoulder lightly, as if afraid, and says, “I’ll get you the First Aid kit and then we’ll fix you up, okay?” He nods and closes his eyes, pulls a quilt off the arm of the couch and wraps it around him (Jake knew it would be there, he knows this apartment like the back of his hand from working cases too late and from nights spent drinking and from watching movies and from failed Thanksgivings; he knows this apartment through the simple action of living in the orbit of someone he loves and it’s a heady, choking feeling to be careening back from open space). Distantly, he’s aware of the snow falling around the apartment, coming past her window in flurries. His apartment, the tiny, shitty one the FBI gave him in the most dangerous part of the town, doesn’t have working heat most of the time. 

He’s gotten used to the cold. 

Tears prickle at his eyes, and he can’t shake the feeling-- the one that seems to constrict his heart. _I can’t breathe,_ he notes as if from far away, and stares at the floor through blurry eyes. 

“Jake? Are you okay?” 

Jake nods and lifts his head, blinking quickly (he wonders when he stopped trusting himself to speak). Amy kneels in front of him, holding disinfectant and band-aids and gauze. 

“Okay,” she mumbles, talking fast, and Jake inexplicably feels a pang of pity for her, “you’ve got multiple wounds to the head and jaw area, but they all seem to be superficial. You fell and hit your head on the ground--” she touches his temple here, and it takes all his strength not to flinch away, “--but again, the damage isn’t too staggering and I think you’ll be alright so long as you rest and don’t try to read anything or watch television or anything like that. I’ll get you some ibuprofen anyways, and a glass of water. That’s all the damage I can see, but you might have sustained more.” 

“Yeah,” he mutters hoarsely. “Yeah, there’s more. I got kicked a couple times in the ribs, and the guy tried to stab me in the shoulder but only grazed it.” Amy breathes in sharply and her hand flits to his arm. He smiles wryly. “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it. You get hurt a lot in jobs like this.” 

“I know. But I still… I know.” 

After that, they don’t talk much. She just patches him up silently, carefully placing band-aids over cuts and disinfecting his wounds. 

“Jake, I need you to remove your shirt for a few minutes so I can treat the bruises. There’s not much I can do, I just need to make sure nothing’s broken or bleeding.” 

He nods and pulls it off without saying anything else. Amy’s breath hitches for a second when she sees the mural of bruises spanning across his left side, already mottled with dark, angry purples and reds and yellows. 

She reaches out a hand to touch his ribs carefully and he hisses out a curse. 

“I’m sorry, Jake,” she whispers. 

Their eyes are full of tears, for some reasons that are different but mostly for reasons that are the same.

_________

Once Amy’s done, Jake knows he’s supposed to leave.

But he doesn’t know if he can. 

She seems to understand as she sits next to him on the couch, carefully not touching him, and it’s eating him alive. 

“So,” he says, and his voice cracks. He grimaces. “So, what’s it been like at the Nine-Nine?” It comes out more like a statement than a question, more tired than inquiring, because they both not the rest of that sentence is _without me._

“Different,” Amy whispers. “I don’t know, it’s just… it's different.” 

She thinks about the empty desk across from her. Plain and clean. Just a computer and a keyboard and a mouse. No paperwork that hasn’t been done yet. No knicknacks. No toys. Nothing to fidget with. Not a full array of uncapped pens scattered across the surface, mixing with unsharpened pencils and eraser shavings and crumbs from a muffin no one ever got around to finishing. She thinks about the quiet briefings, the spaces where jokes were supposed to live, the times where she’d turned to her right with full intentions of making a snide comment only to find empty space, the wretched pauses after the sergeant would mistakenly call Jake’s name for a case. She thinks about breaking up with Teddy, thinks about his puzzled, broken face seared now into her mind, thinks about empty parking lots and boxes that held an entire career and _romantic stylez._

“It’s just different,” Amy repeats in a voice that scrapes in her throat. Jake’s eyes are searing into hers, light brown and empty and honest. 

They both lean forward at the same time. His lips are on hers and her hands are in his hair (grown out and shaggy and a little dirty; he hasn’t had the time to go to a barber for several months) and his hands are pressing against her ribs, and neither of them can breathe as they kiss each other senseless, gasping into each other’s mouths and then pulling away slowly, in tandem. Their eyes are wide and shining with unshed tears. 

“I missed you,” he breathes, “so much.” 

She doesn’t respond but kisses him again, this time a little less desperate but just as sad. Jake can feel her tears on his face, and fights the urge to laugh, absurdly, because what else can you do? 

“This is a bad time,” Amy says softly, breathing a little hard, “but I think I’m a little in love with you, so-- maybe just pretend I didn’t say that?” 

Then he does laugh, really. “No way, Ames, no way in hell am I ever forgetting that. Plus, I think I’m a little in love with you too.” 

(This time, he kisses her first.)

_________

Nothing happens between them that night other than kissing, not that they were expecting it to. It’s not that kind of night. Neither of them have had that kind of night in months.

Amy locks the door to her apartment and double- and triple-checks her windows, obscured by the snow. She looks tired and afraid, but Jake’s never seen anything more beautiful. 

“They figured out I was the mole in the earlier sting,” he tells her later, when the two of them are curled together in her bed, Amy’s head against his collarbone and her arms wrapped carefully around his torso, avoiding his bruises (but still very clearly communicating _you are here_ and _you aren’t leaving any time soon)._

“Jake, you have to get out of there.” 

He chuckles drily. “FBI doesn’t know yet. I might still pull off this sting, so long as the head Ianucci doesn’t believe those guys.” 

Amy sits up, unwinding herself from him. He lets out a soft noise of protest, but merely looks up at her wearily. 

“Please. Be safe. Promise me.” 

He smiles sadly. Of course she knows it’s futile to ask. It won’t protect him. The simple fact is this: the job is dangerous with a high chance of being deadly. He knew that going in. She knows that, and he knows she knows that. 

Regardless: “Promise me, Peralta.” 

Jake lifts up a hand to touch her cheek, and she thinks she might cry again. “I promise,” he says softly, and leans up to kiss her even softer, more like a breath than a press of lips. 

After that, they sleep. There’s nothing else to do.

_________

There are only two principal possibilities concerning what happens next.

_________

He comes back to the precinct on a Tuesday.

It’s a slow day, and he enters so quietly, so lacking in fanfare, that Amy is the first to notice him, and even then only when he sits down in the desk across from her and sets his little police figurine down by his keyboard. 

She lets out a choked little gasp, and Jake looks up and smiles at her, eyes lighting up in a way they haven’t months, soft and warm and affectionate, and before any time passes at all they’re scrambling around the bulk of their desks and he’s wrapping her up into a tight, bone-crushing hug. 

He kisses her shoulder lightly and quickly, in a way no one notices in the hubbub of his return. Then he’s pulling back, smiling triumphantly and holding up his arms. 

“Jake Peralta is back and better than ever!” he crows, punching his fists, and Amy chokes out a sobbing laugh and pulls him in for a kiss, victorious and long. 

The room is quiet around them for a moment before erupting anew with cheers. From the back of the room, Holt stands with crossed arms, and, for a fraction of a second, smiles.

_________

He dies on a Tuesday.

It takes the beat cops from the Nine-Nine who found the body too long to identify it, and once they do, they hesitate. The Ianuccis had put three bullets in him-- one to his head and two to his heart (later they would find this darkly ironic) --and tossed him off the Brooklyn bridge. The FBI took the defeat graciously, cut their losses, shoved his file into a different drawer, and sent in another guy. The Ninety-Ninth precinct took it less well. 

Some of them go to his funeral out of respect, or to keep up appearances. Amy is not one of those people. 

“He promised,” she tells Rosa a few months later, drunkenly leaning against her as she guides her into a cab. “He promised he’d stay safe.” 

Rosa’s eyes are uncharacteristically soft. “You know that’s not how it works.” She lets Amy stay at her house for a week. She understands why Amy is afraid of sleeping alone, though she never mentions it aloud. 

“You’re a good secret-keeper, Rosa,” Amy slurs, on another night, at another bar. (They don’t go to Shaw’s anymore. Mostly, they don’t look each other into the eye, anymore, either.) 

“I know.” 

There’s a pause as they watch each other. 

“I was in love with him.” 

“I know.” 

“I think we all were, a little, but--” 

“Yeah,” Rosa murmurs. There’s not much else to say, after that.

A week later, Amy transfers out of the Nine-Nine. 

They say they’ll keep in touch, but none of them really believe it.

She keeps the little policewoman figurine Jake gave her seven years ago (the cheapest, worst Secret Santa gift ever, but God knows she can’t make herself part with it) and throws out everything else.

_________

There are only two possibilities.

That morning, Jake leaves, small bandages dotting his skin, hair ruffled, and he pauses in the doorway. There’s a small, sad smile curling on his lips that will disappear the second he walks out the door. 

“Goodbye, Ames,” and there’s the possibility of finality there that neither of them want to examine too closely. 

“Goodbye, Jake.” 

The door closes. 

There are only two possibilities. 

Amy sits down in her rocking chair, watches the snow fall outside her window, and waits.

**Author's Note:**

> choose your own adventure
> 
> ok so listen,,,, this was supposed to be full on angsty but i chickened the fuck out. i don't know whether or not to tag this with major character death but like it doesn't really count, who knows. 
> 
> tell me if you enjoyed this by leavin a kudos or a comment if you want! this is also unedited so tell me if i made any mistakes, and i'm also very open to constructive criticism.
> 
> and by the way I’m on tumblr @fishycorvid if u wanna talk


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